Filming in New Orleans since the depths of summer's heat, churning production millions into the city's storm-staggered local economy all the while, "K-Ville" took a break last week for playoff baseball, but returns with a new episode Monday night (Oct. 22).

It seems like a good time to take stock.

Creatively, "K-Ville" has been trending upward ever since it errantly introduced "gumbo party" into the lexicon of local ironists. The Fox drama about NOPD officers working the post-K maelstrom has steadily improved its execution of cop-show essentials while dialing down its too-easy Big Easy references.

Commercially, it's perched on the precipice of "the low end of acceptable," said a rival network TV ratings analyst I spoke with about the show's Nielsen performance. After four episodes, it's TV's No.¤75 ranked series, with an average audience of 5.8 million.

The plurality of early pre-season reviews said "K-Ville" wouldn't last this long, so in some ways the series has exceeded expectations by not already surrendering its time slot to "House" reruns. But nobody who knows anything about Fox overlord Rupert Murdoch believes that the low end of anything, except perhaps taste standards, is actually acceptable.

Building ratings momentum over the next several weeks will be difficult. The show's upcoming schedule of originals is erratic -- breaking again for baseball next week (with a rerun scheduled if the World Series ends early) and a two-hour "Prison Break" the week after, then returning for at least three straight episodes during the "sweeps" month of November -- but at least it's not "Nashville," the Fox dramality series that's already been yanked.

What "K-Ville" is at the moment is on the bubble. Far from a hit, it has performed just well enough in a slaughterhouse of a time slot to buy some patience from Fox, whose current commitment is 13 episodes plus a couple of scripts to pre-stock should the episode order be extended to a full season.

"K-Ville" debuted against reruns, but the three episodes that have aired since then went head to head with, in order of popularity, ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," the CBS sitcoms "Two and a Half Men" and "Rules of Engagement" and NBC's "Heroes."

Though far from holding its own -- "K-Ville" finishes fourth in its time slot among broadcast networks, and has lost overall audience with every airing -- the show seems to have established modest-but-hope-floating stability in the 18-49 demographic, the viewership slice most desired by advertisers and therefore the networks who sell commercial time.

Tossing out the artificial high of the premiere, "K-Ville" has established a core of viewers of saleable age (a core that would likely swell minus ESPN's "Monday Night Football"). It also retains most of the audience it gets from lead-in "Prison Break," whose sliding ratings performance this season isn't doing our Katrina Kops much good.

Locally, "K-Ville" is a hands-down ratings hit, though there's no telling who's watching to be entertained and who's watching for purposes of drinking games tied to cultural, geographical and culinary flubs.

"Do we wish that more people were watching?" said Marcy Ross, Fox's executive vice president of programming. "Absolutely, because we're proud of the show, and we think that it deserves a larger audience. We have by no means given up on this. We've even picked up a couple of more scripts."

Ratings aren't the only measurement that matters for a show like "K-Ville."

"We look to see if creatively a show is finding its footing and growing," Ross said. "That's a very important gauge for us, and that's happening on this show."

Accordingly, Ross predicted a ratings improvement to match the show's aesthetic growth. She also said the network's plan for "K-Ville" is to stick with its tough time slot at least through the fall.

Overall ratings so far this TV season are lackluster everywhere. No new series has leapt out of the pack to bona fide hit status, and many returning shows have lost significant numbers of viewers compared with past seasons. Accordingly, neither mass cancellations nor mass full-season episode orders have come down. Fox, with "American Idol" and "24" in its second-season bullpen, can afford to sit tight.

"There's a lot of sampling going on," Ross said. "Viewers have a lot of dramas to choose from right now. The consistency of 'K-Ville' staying at (8) p.m. on Mondays I think is going to be a positive. I believe we're going to start see a ticking-up (of audience totals).

"Our marketing of the show has not lessened at all. We're promoting it heavily through baseball and we really believe we can will this to success.

"I think this has a good a chance as any other show to make it to a full season."

One factor in "K-Ville's" future that apparently nobody can control is the possibility of a fall strike by the Writers Guild of America. The guild's contract with studios expires Nov. 1. The sides appear to be far apart on bargaining issues, chief of which is figuring a fair digital-distribution revenue split.

If the writers strike this fall, scripted-TV production would shut down and broadcast network prime-time schedules would soon clog with quickie reality shows, reruns, newsmagazines and sports.

A recent story in the Hollywood trade publication Variety cited "K-Ville" as the kind of series a fall strike could hit hardest.

Faced with a long location production shutdown, the story posited, Fox would be tempted to outright cancel a non-hit like "K-Ville" rather than riding out a strike in hopes of a future audience revival.

"I don't see 'K-Ville' as having any less or more of a problem than any other show," Ross said. "If there's a strike, every show is in trouble."

TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3429.